Hardly any other company carries the Planegg name as far out into the world as the Müller-BBM engineering office – and has done so for 60 years. Whether it’s the world-famous opera house in Sydney, Australia, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the airport in Munich or the Stadtcasino in Basel: the acoustic and environmental engineers from Steinkirchen near Planegg are very often called upon to help when there are dissonances in the truest sense of the word of the word when it comes to creating a new miracle of sound or, for example, when it comes to noise emissions from aircraft taking off and landing. And by the way “engineering office”: Today, Müller-BBM is a large company. Thousands of specialists work at Müller-BBM worldwide, around 450 at the headquarters in Planegg alone. They recently generated an annual turnover of 121 million euros and thus make a significant contribution to the economic boom of the Planegg community.
The Sydney Opera House is one of the concert halls where the Müller-BBM company was involved in the acoustics.
(Photo: Robert Harding/imago)
In the Munich region, people know the “jack of all trades in acoustics” – that’s how the founding entrepreneur Helmut A. Müller, who died in 2015, is known within the company – and his successors, not only because of their outstanding know-how in the field of acoustics, but also because of much more banal, but nevertheless very important expertise: noise protection reports on busy roads, for example. In short: Wherever emissions and immissions are concerned, the Planegger experts are needed. Their repertoire is therefore almost inexhaustible. It’s about the areas of construction and the environment, concert and opera houses, universities and hospitals, sports stadiums or the question of whether a tangent such as Germeringer Strasse, which is used by almost 20,000 cars a day, across the residential area of Planegg is the legally permissible pollutant – Complies with limits. Which, by the way, it only just does, as Müller-BBM found out. It’s about noises or vibrations, but also about smells, light or pollutants in general that may have an impact on the environment: all cases for Müller-BBM.
Measuring traffic noise, like here in Gräfelfing, is the less glamorous side of Müller-BBM’s work.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
In 1962 there were 24 employees and a single office in Munich, at that time still under the name Müller-BBN. The three capital letters stood for the then US partner Bolt Beranek Newman. He later got out and the N was quickly and inconspicuously turned into an M like Müller. In 1976 the company moved to Planegg and has constantly expanded in the Steinkirchner industrial park – a total of six times. There are now more than 30 subsidiaries worldwide, and Müller-BBM Holding AG has branches in eight German federal states. And even the street where the company is located has been renamed: two years ago, Robert-Koch-Straße became Helmut-A.-Müller-Straße.
Naturally, the area of responsibility of engineers has changed and expanded over the years and decades. The largest area, so it is said in the house, is the topic of “sustainability”. It affects construction and the associated resources that you want and need to save. The buzzword “climate change” has a very special meaning for the Planegger company. Municipalities, project developers and planners are supported in the early stages of measures that affect the climate in cities, for example: ventilation of districts, training and avoidance of extreme heat in certain streets, investigation of the effect of compensatory measures such as green spaces.
Müller-BBM records the “actual status”. After that, possible changes due to climate change are presented. Fire protection in public buildings is a permanent issue, especially in the municipalities. Müller-BBM advises architects and builders on this. Millions of euros often have to be built when the legal requirements are no longer met – in Planegg, the entire Feodor-Lynen-Gymnasium or the historic elementary school was recently affected. But Müller-BBM was also active in the field of acoustics in Planegg – in the Kupferhaus cultural center, which has since been used by musicians from all over Germany for recordings.
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary, there will be an open day at Müller-BBM in Steinkirchen on Thursday, May 12th. From 9.30 a.m. there will be specialist lectures and tours, followed by a barbecue evening.